Tag: Red

Red

Lovin’ him was red…

My favorite Taylor Swift jam is “Red,” by the way.

Remote Friday and all is quiet and well in the Lost Apartment this morning, other than Sparky complaining ( as always) that his breakfast wasn’t enough food. (He always insists he is starving to death, the little beast. And his plaintive cries are so convincing, too–until I ignore him and he goes back to sleep.) I had a good day yesterday; I had another marvelous night’s sleep on Wednesday and felt really good yesterday. I did some writing–not much, mostly some prep work and editing

Yesterday at work I decided I didn’t want the lunch I brought with me after all, and decided to use one of the food delivery apps to get Five Guys. This was a brand new experience for me, one I had been wanting to try since I was housebound and sick, and yesterday I just decided fuck it, I want Five Guys and DoorDashed it. It went swimmingly, I might add, and I am going to have to be careful now–this was so easy it will be very tempting to do this a lot more often–like Saturday for lunch. Stop it, Greg, keep it under control. I know, I am a late adapter, but I always have been. And the temptation to get food delivered all the time is going to be a struggle for me. All I do since the illness is think about food, and what would be good. There are all kinds of places on those delivery apps that look interesting and I want to try–maybe I’ll splurge again this weekend. See how easy it is to give into temptation.

The combination of Canadian wildfire smoke and the Saharan dust has made things weird here in New Orleans. It smells like burning rubber outside, and the dust has made for some terrific sunrise/sunset photos by the intrepid local photographers I follow on social media, who always manage to come up with these incredibly beautiful shots of the city. But it’s murder on my eyes and my sinuses–neither of which need much assistance in making me miserable.

I was a bit on the tired side when I got home. I went to get the mail and pick up a library book (about the Red Scare of the 1950’s, so it’s research), and by the time I got home and fed Sparky I needed to sit down for a bit, and I even dozed off. Paul came home later and we watched another Department Q and the most recent Murderbot, and then I tried to do some chores before going to bed later than I usually do. I didn’t read anything, either. Gotta get back on that horse soon. I did work on the writing a bit last night, reviewing some things for revision and making notes. Maybe I’ll actually write-write this weekend. I do want to get some short stories written, and I don’t have many errands to do–but I do need to clean this house for sure. Sheesh. And of course LSU plays in the super regional this weekend, so I’ll have that on while I do things (read, most likely).

But yesterday was another good and efficient day for me at work, which was nice. I got all my Admin work caught up that I have to do at the office, and here’s hoping I can get caught up on all my Remote Admin work today; we do have meetings this morning, and I also have some on-line trainings to do that are required to be done every year. I know all the answers because I’ve done them now every year for ten years, but the refresher is not a bad thing at all, and it also works as a test of my memory–which has not been the greatest in quite some time. Heavy heaving sigh. It’s a bitch getting older, even if I am feeling better every day. The getting up early, thanks to the Sparky-alarm, isn’t my favorite thing, either, but I am not groggy and sleepy in the mornings since I have time to eat breakfast and drink more coffee before I leave the house; and yes, I am very glad that my coffee tastes good to me again. I do enjoy my little breakfast at home, and other than my being sleepy earlier in the evening (I was asleep in my chair when Paul got home tonight), it’s not the worst development in my life by a long shot.

And on that note, my toast has popped up in the toaster, one piece crying out for peanut butter, the other for strawberry jelly (what is the difference between jelly and jam? They didn’t have preserves, which is what I actually wanted), and so I am going to bring this to a close, take a breakfast break, and then head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back in the morning with a full report. (I think we’re going to Costco later on this afternoon, too.)

I’ve never been sure why I’ve always been interested in abandoned places, but they’ve always stirred my imagination.

Ruby Baby

And Saturday morning has rolled around again, and it’s a lovely morning here in the Lost Apartment. The LSU game tonight is being televised (SEC Network) so I can flip back and forth between LSU and the Georgia-Alabama game. There aren’t many games on today that I feel the need to watch or even follow, but I can have the games on while I do other things. Yesterday I ended up taking the day off–I didn’t know how long I’d be out with the errands so I just bit the bullet and took a personal day. It ended up being a lovely day; the weather was very spectacular; in the heat of the summer it’s easy to forget how gorgeous it is here the rest of the year. After the errands were done, I finished reading Jordan Harper’s superb Everybody Knows (more on that later), cleaned up the house some, and had a rather nice day at home with Sparky. I think for the weekend I am going to reread two rather short horror novels to get in the mood for Halloween Horror Month, and the first read of that month will be Gabino Iglesias’ House of Rain and Bone.

We started watching Grotesquerie last night, and it’s really superb. Niecy Nash-Betts is a fantastic actress with incredible range, and this part is perfect for her. The show is very creepy and reminiscent in some ways of the classic Seven, from the 1990’s with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman (which is also my favorite Gwyneth Paltrow film), and we were sucked in again. I hope the show doesn’t wind up going off the rails, as so many of Murphy’s shows do, but I am looking forward to watching. I’m actually also still thinking about Monsters–isn’t the point of great art to unsettle you, make you see things from a different perspective, and perhaps even change your mind about something? I don’t know that I’m interested in learning any more about the case–not doing any deep dives into the Menendez case, but watching the show did give a fresh perspective on the case, and society and the culture have changed significantly since the murders and the trials.

I do have some errands to run today–I need to get the mail, drop books off at the library sale, wash the car, and make a grocery run. I ordered a new desk chair (my old one was torn to shreds by Skittle…and he’s been gone for fourteen years) because this old one is definitely ready to be retired and sent to the dumpster. I don’t think I am going to cook out this weekend–unless I decide to barbecue that pork tenderloin in the freezer; tenderloin always tastes better when it’s got a bit of burnt crust. Note to self: either set it out to defrost or get something else at the Fresh Market for dinner tomorrow. Of course, I could just get a pizza for tomorrow…decisions, decisions. I also want to make some more progress on the book today and the Scotty Bible; I need to mark pages in the last two Scotty books, and I am also trying to decide how this current one works out (I did solve problems I was having with two other works-in-progress, Muscles and Chlorine; reading good writers always gives me inspiration for my own; thanks, Jordan!). The Saints play the Dirty Birds tomorrow, and I’ll probably do a grocery run tomorrow, too. I also want to get caught on some blog posts that have been in drafts for a while, and I’ve not done a Substack in quite a while–you can’t build an audience (I blocked a right-winger yesterday who started following me; no fucking thanks, treasonous scum) without posting.

And there’s always, always, cleaning to do.

But…truth be told, I don’t feel anxious or stressed about anything. That’s actually kind of lovely, you know? I also want to watch Saturday Night Live tonight–at least the cold open, I can always stream it tomorrow–but not sure if I want to stay up that late. I stayed up later than I intended to last night, which was fine, but I managed to get up at eight anyway (thanks to Sparky) and I feel good today. I need some more coffee and some breakfast, and to get cleaned up, but I kind of want to get the kitchen and so forth under control before I run my errands before coming home to watch games and do things. I had the Eras tour on yesterday while I read and cleaned, and it really is very excellent; reminding me again of what a force of talented creativity Taylor Swift is–and the way those massive crowds react to her is really something to see, the joy on the faces of people actually there as they dance and sing along with her as she puts on a helluva show. (I still wish she’d done “Red,” but her choices from the Red album were pretty good ones, and the ten-minute version of “All Too Well” certainly belongs on the set list.) So, of course MAGA has targeted her–they want to kill all joy. Period. The Joy Killers is what we should be calling them.

And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close so I can get more coffee and have breakfast. Have a spectacular Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back for sure.

Screenshot

You Belong to Me

Ah, Taylor Swift.

I watched the Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version) during my nights as a Festival widow. I’ve always liked Taylor Swift, and I’ve never really understood why she gets so much hate. I wouldn’t go as far as to call myself a Swiftie, although I did start writing an essay several years ago called “A Sixty Year Old Swiftie” after I watched the Miss Americana documentary. She’s always seemed like a good person to me, and whatever music of hers I’d heard I liked, but I never went in search of it. I’d hear a new song of hers every once in a while, would enjoy it, and then download it from Apple. I don’t remember watching the video music awards the year Kanye interrupted her acceptance (which is I think when the world first became truly aware of her), but I think I did. I always used to listen to music in the car on long trips (I am a fairly recent convert to audiobooks in the car), and I remember driving to Kentucky one year listening to my “Drive” playlist (eight hours) and a song that was really catchy came on. My mind was wandering as it often does when I drive listening to music so it really becomes just background music. “What is this song?” I wondered, looking at the screen on the car stereo–“Red” by Taylor Swift. I have no memory of downloading the song, or ever having heard it before, but I repeated it at least twice more and fell in love with it. I had several other songs of hers downloaded and on that same playlist (“You Belong to Me,” “Love Story,” and “Mean”) that I also have no memory of buying and listening to; I also don’t remember how I discovered the video for “Red,” either, but I also have a Youtube playlist of Taylor videos. I was happy when she made her comeback after the “recorded phone call” (which was a crime, by the way; it’s illegal to record conversations in California without everyone’s consent); and she’s kind of conquered the world in the meantime, becoming one of the biggest stars in the world ever. The Eras tour made her a billionaire. She gives enormous bonuses to her team. She donates money wherever she performs to food banks. She’s a queer ally, progressive politically, and she fights misogyny and sexism all the time.

Not bad for a girl with a dream.

But watching the concert movie? I am now completely a Swiftie, with no apologies offered.

I’m glad I never wrote (or finished writing) that essay, because my affection and delight for Swift has grown exponentially since that first writing. One of my favorite Youtube things to do is watch concert clips of her performing–she is so clearly enjoying herself and loves her fans–and their worship of her is fun to watch. I appreciate her allyship, I appreciate her pro-gay anthem, I appreciate everything about her. But watching the concert film was a revelation. There wasn’t a single song I didn’t enjoy or like in the film (although I remain bummed she didn’t include “Red” on her set list), and I realized that every time I’ve listened to one of her albums on Spotify over the years, I’ve never skipped a song and have often replayed some. The show she puts on for her fans is extraordinary; and I love that the girls who loved her at the start of her career have also turned their kids on to her. All age groups adore her, and while I have no desire to sit through another concert at any point in my life again, I’d almost be tempted to see her on tour. The concert movie, which I would start streaming and turn the sound up so I could listen while cleaning, was a blast. I found myself dancing with my vacuum, or dancing around with the feather duster as I cleaned.

I mean, more power to her. Her star just keeps rising and shining brighter with every new album release, and she doesn’t seem like she plans to slow down at any time soon. She produces new music, all of it catchy and a potential hit, with an astonishing regularity. She doesn’t have the kind of pipes that say an Aretha Franklin or a Patti LuPone can bring to their singing, but her voice is pleasant enough to skitter up and down the scale, and her lyrics are very poetic. I used to think her tween fans simply stayed loyal past their expiration date while she built up new fan bases with every album, but that isn’t true. Each new generation seems to find her when they are ready to start appreciating music, and her graciousness to her fans, her kindness and her gratitude, is delightful to see in a megastar.

Plus, the entire right-wing meltdown over her relationship with Travis Kelce (who is adorable) made me enjoy their courtship even more than I already had. She keeps triggering right-wingers, and I am hear for it. I love how everyone on Fox was telling her to just shut up and sing and stay out of politics…”and after our commercial break, Kevin Sorbo will explain how he’s discriminated against for his beliefs and values.”

When I think about how much they would have wet their underpants had she been a conservative, a cruel Grinch-like smile spreads across my face.

But ultimately, she seems like a good person and she loves making music and she loves her fans. It’s nice to see someone who appreciates their fans succeed, you know?

And I will undoubtedly watch the movie again several times.

Love’s Been a Little Bit Hard on Me

Wednesday pay-the-bills day, and I am a bit groggy this morning, but that’s okay, really. I slept well and didn’t want to get up, and there’s nothing wrong with that (why I’ve always felt like not wanting to get out of bed in the morning makes me a lazy slug is something else I clearly need to work on). But the weekend draws nigh, which is always a lovely thing, and of course…parades. Yes, the parades start this weekend, with three on Friday night, six (!!!) on Saturday, and another three on Sunday. It’s also supposed to rain all weekend, so I don’t know how much time I will actually spend out at the corner this weekend risking getting sick and/or tired. I was also very tired last night, to the point that I really didn’t do much of anything once I got home from work yesterday afternoon. I didn’t do any chores, I didn’t run any errands, and I didn’t get the mail.

I did work on the story more and it’s starting to take a better shape than the mess that it originally was. I’m not certain why it’s taking me so long to get this draft finished, but I am instead going to think of it in terms of your writing muscles are as rusty as your actual muscles and so yes, they need to be used a bit more so I can get back into the swing of using those muscles every day. I really should think about writing now as writing therapy; the same mindset as my physical therapy. I am slowly but surely getting back into the spirit of writing after a deeply traumatic year, and the more I do it, the stronger and more lithe those muscles will get–and the less warm-up they will need. Having so many of the conflicting voices in my head stilled at long last also helps me with the focus and stuff; the problem is the lack of use and working out the kinks and the doubts. I think the story is going to make better sense and be much stronger than it was going to originally be in this draft version, and I did think about it a lot last night, too. I have always had a powerful imagination, and so last night I was using it to imagine what it would feel like out in the Manchac Swamp on a night in early October–and the kinds of risks college students will take that older people probably wouldn’t. If it weren’t for the parades–and maybe after the season is over I can do this–I should drive out to the swamp and check it out; there are a lot of places around New Orleans and in Louisiana in general that I really should go visit and experience.

Time, and exhaustion, is always such an issue. I do remember driving somewhere–I’m not sure where or why–that required me to cross the lake to Slidell on my way; I was writing something that required me to take a look at that far reach of New Orleans east that heads out to the bridge over the Rigolets, and so I detoured on my way to get a good look. (I also used that visit to base a scene in Royal Street Reveillon on as well; two for the price of one!) I’ve also noticed that, now that I have take up my proverbial quill again, my process of writing is a little different than it used to be; again, rusty out of use muscles might have something to do with it, but it could also be a change, who knows? My process has evolved and changed so much since Ye Olden Days when I first starting treating writing as a job and a vocation as opposed to a dream. (It’s also why I hate process questions, mine is rarely ever the same, especially when it comes to writing short stories.) I do like this story and like where it’s going; I really like the idea of my four unsuspecting, slightly drunk and high college students out visiting a supposedly haunted location in the Manchac Swamp (putting some of those New Orleans-area history wormholes I’ve gone down since the pandemic started) and I think it could be a terrific (if macabre) little story. And it’s something I am actually writing, not something I’m just thinking about. The story will probably always be special to me for being the first thing I wrote and finished after the surgery.

I’ve also been watching, with no small amount of amusement, as the right wing anger cancellation machine (you know, the thing they bitch about from the left while doing themselves because they are nothing if not the biggest hypocritical pieces of shit in recent American and world history) has decided to come for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. I have enjoyed so many cruel laughs at their expense over the last few months! Why stop there? Why not come for Beyonce, too? They never learn, do they? Their refusal to look at factual history–even factual recent history–showed itself when Ron DeSantis chose to follow the Southern Baptist playbook and come for Disney to bolster his dead-before-it-started presidential campaign? The Mouse is undefeated, and remains undefeated. Taylor Swift is the biggest pop culture star in the world right now whose fans absolutely worship her–and her fans are of all ages, and they protect her from scavenging low-life scum whenever and wherever someone tries to come for her. The irony that this romance is actually the culmination of every Taylor Swift longing teenaged love songs–she’s dating the star football player AT LAST–does not Fox or Newsmax in their quest to humble Taylor Swift, who is laughing at them as she sits on her piles of gold and the love and admiration of millions around the globe. I wouldn’t call myself a Swiftie1–I do like her music, and listen to it occasionally, but it’s not my go-to–but I do admire her as an artist, a businesswoman, and a person. She stands up for the underprivileged, she supports queer people and queer rights, and above all else she fights misogyny (which a lot of the right-wing hate is predicated upon) whenever she encounters it, calls it out, and is not afraid to go to court to fight it, either. The way she outsmarted the douche who bought her original masters deserves a five minute standing ovation.

I may not know a lot about Ms. Swift, but I do know better than to fuck with her or activate her fans. And frankly, the profas (if the the left is antifa, then it stands to reason that their position makes the right profa, right?) are soooo stupid and blindly wrapped up in their cult of Golden Calf worship that their rage makes me like her all the more. I listened to her Red album in the car on my way home from the office yesterday and it’s still a banger (“Red” is my favorite Swift song, don’t @ me), and I’ll probably be listening to more of her music in the coming days as well. I also love that the derangement extends to rooting against the Kansas City Chiefs in the upcoming Super Bowl–which means they have to root for San Francisco.

(laughs evilly in gay.)

And on that note, I need to head into the spice mines and start paying the bills. Have a lovely Wednesday and you never know–I may pop in again later.

  1. Although I did start writing an essay during the pandemic that I called “A Sixty-Year Old Swiftie.” ↩︎

I Don’t Know Why

Wednesday Pay-the-Bills Day has rolled around again, and my goodness, do I have a lot of bills to pay, YIKES. But with another six thousand word push yesterday, the draft is done. All I need to do now is pull it all together into one document, write the explanatory apologetic email about the mess and how I am going to fix it, and send it off and all is finished–for now. But I know it’s going to be a great book once I tie up all the threads, add in the back story and character development it needs, and I think it’s going to be super awesome when it’s done. Yay! I love creating, I really do, and I actually enjoy the writing.

Well, until I hear back from my editor, at any rate.

I finally started listening to Taylor Swift’s latest album, Midnights, and I have to say, I really like it. I’d always liked her–some of the songs I knew I liked, but I didn’t pay a lot of attention to her or her music. Spotify changed that, and I really have been impressed not only with the quality of her music but how different it all is; not to mention the evolution from teen country star to major world pop superstar. (“Red” is still my favorite song of hers, probably always will be.) I find that putting her albums on continual play on Spotify is really great when it comes to cleaning things or doing the dishes and things like that. (Back when I first started writing I always would put three Madonna CD’s in the CD changer and hit shuffle and would start writing. I should go back to that, really.) I had a lot of chores to get done last night around my writing–unloading the dishwasher and doing another load; cleaning the counters and organizing the office area, etc.–but I do like having those opportunities to take a break from the writing to clear my head and see what comes to me while my hands are focused on something mindless and music streams through my ear buds.

I really do like writing, y’all.

I still have a lot of work to do on the manuscripts I’ve written the last couple of months, but it’s nice to have workable, fixable drafts in place; that’s always the hardest part for me, and the ability to focus on the writing without having to worry about anything else outside of my job and whether the books are selling is kind of nice, actually. I think it’s part of the reason why I’m calmer every day, don’t get my anxiety going, and don’t get stressed. I was irritated when I got home Monday–because I knew I had writing to get done, and I had errands to run which seemed to take much longer than anything had any need to take (don’t even get me started on the hell making groceries has turned into since the pandemic started) but once I was home and had everything under control and could sit down and pound away at the keyboard for a while, after which I was finally completely and totally relaxed for the evening. And of course, last night after a very productive day at work in which I got all of my day job responsibilities finished and caught up (huzzah!), I came home and wrote while doing those odious seeming chores that I always wind up enjoying. And Paul didn’t come home until after I’d gone to bed, so there were no distractions for me, but I would have loved to have watched another episode of The Recruit. I don’t like it when Paul comes home that late because I don’t see him for that day (I leave long before he gets up in the morning; which is another reason I hate working these shifts; I like when Paul and I work basically the same schedule.

It’s going to be warm and rainy today, which means I’ll be wearing a sweatshirt to work underneath my Crescent Care T-shirt; it was freezing in the office yesterday; last week the heat was on, but the weather changed, and they finally turned on the air conditioning I guess on Friday (it had been insanely warm in the office all week) and so yesterday it felt like the frozen tundra of the great white north in the office, which of course meant I was pretty much miserable the entire day there. But I was productive and got all my work caught up; today of course is the first which means all kinds of things for me to do this morning; pulling logs and forms for the month, putting out new ones for the new month and so forth, and of course seeing my clients.

After talking about them negatively yesterday, I do feel I need to thank the Horror Writers’ Association, which quickly moved to ban the incredibly insulting member from all their events and kicked him out of the organization. I had mentioned that I had left the organization a while back because one I’m not really a horror writer, and second because I felt that the organization had a ways to go as far as being welcoming to the non-white non-straight part of the community–I had been made to not feel welcome when I actually chaired World Horror Con in New Orleans, and while I didn’t have quite the same experience when I went to Las Vegas…there were enough little things to make me decide that my money and time were better spent in the mystery community, and that’s what I’ve done. I returned in December for some reason or another–I think they sent me a really nice “we want you back” email–and to be honest, this whole mess over the last week or so kind of had me thinking I’d made the wrong decision in coming back. But the swift movement of the HWA board of trustees over this matter was heartening, and while I have no intention of volunteering for anything any time soon for anyone or anywhere, I do not regret my decision. (I am also remembering that the community is also cantankerous and there are all kinds of feuds and things–long-time long-held grudges and so forth, which isn’t fun to navigate in trying to remember who doesn’t like who and so on; I usually don’t care or pay attention to such things and generally remain neutral because I don’t know the people well enough to have an opinion one way or the other.)

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday Pay-the-Bills Day, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow morning.

Sooner Than You Think

Friday, Friday, gotta get down it’s Friday!

Well, I got my second inoculation yesterday, and yes, I don’t feel so hot this morning. Yesterday was weird; after getting home and working for the rest of the afternoon, I could sense something was, for want of a better word, off. Not bad, not sick, not anything like that–just off. After work as I sat in the easy chair waiting for Paul to come home, my hands were cold…which is also unusual; my hands are always warm and tend to get sweaty, which makes wearing gloves a challenge in cold weather. I also felt incredibly tired, despite sleeping really well the night before. I kept dozing off and on, and was too tired to focus on reading. I went to bed early, slept deeply and well–didn’t wake up for the first time until around seven, and went right back to sleep. Now I am up and feeling a little dragged out, yet rested at the same time. My hands are cold again this morning, but the rest of me isn’t. My shoulder also wasn’t sore yesterday, but it sure the fuck is this morning. So no gym today for sure–I’ll see how it feels tomorrow–and at least I don’t feel sick. These other weird side effects–the exhaustion and fatigue, the cold hands–are something I can live with and handle, and I’d rather be vaccinated than not. I just find it curious, but I’ve always had weird reactions to flu shots, too–until the last few years, where it hasn’t affected me at all. I am glad I am taking today off from work, though. Yesterday’s lethargy and the lethargy from earlier in the week from being tired shall not stand! The Lost Apartment is a mess, things need to be cleaned and put away, and I have a lot of volunteer work and writing to get done over the course of this weekend.

We’ll see how the energy thing works out, shall we?

At the very least, I hope I have the energy to get back to reading Alyssa Cole’s When No One Is Watching, or some short stories.

And I’ve got to start working on the manuscript. The good news is I don’t have any other writing distractions going on in my head right now–there’s an anthology I want to submit to later this spring, and there’s an open call for a magazine I’d like to get into that will be open for about a week in March–but other than that there’s literally nothing else pending other than getting this damned manuscript revised for the last time. I’ve been reading through it casually–I sent the entire document to my Kindle, so I can read it on my iPad while reclining in my easy chair–and there are some incredibly good bits in there that I am quite pleased with. The plot is the weakest part, as always, so I am going to have to tear the entire thing down into its parts and rearrange it while seeing what else is missing from it that I need to fill in.

My air fryer arrived yesterday, but I was too lethargic yesterday to try to use it; guess what I am going try to do today? Yes, I am going to try to make nuggets for lunch in it. It’s a little on the small side, but that’s okay; if I like it and find it convenient I can always get a larger one later. Hurray for consumerism, I suppose?

But it looks beautiful outside this morning, if a bit on the cold side (my hands are still cold; even holding my coffee cup isn’t helping), and I’d rather it be sunny than raining and gloomy. The Lost Apartment has become quite messy, and since that doesn’t require any real brain power to execute, I am probably going to work on cleaning and organizing once I post this, before taking a shower and seeing how I feel then–if I still feel like I do now, I’ll probably retire to my chair and read the rest of the day while Taylor Swift videos play on the television. (I’ve really become a fan of hers lately; those last two albums were stellar, and of course I never tire of the song “Red”–I don’t think I’ve heard anything of hers I haven’t liked; I should write a story called “Red” at some point; alert Constant Readers may have noticed I spent a good portion of 2020 on this blog with entries using her song titles. For those keeping track, I have always used song titles; for years I simply used whatever song I was listening to while I was writing the entry. Then I started going through the Top 100 hits of a given year from my childhood, before moving on to the Pet Shop Boys catalogue. I followed that with the Taylor Swift catalogue, and now am using New Order’s recordings. Not really sure what will follow New Order, to be honest; maybe country song charts from the 60’s and 70’s–some of those song titles are bound to be doozies)

You know, it just occurred to me how I feel this morning; I feel like an orange that has been squeezed for every last drop of juice–completely wrung out, hollowed out, empty. Heavy heaving sigh. Perhaps I should eat some breakfast, and start the cleaning process.

Have a lovely Friday morning, Constant Reader!